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The inaugural meeting

Report on the inaugural meeting of Port Historica, The Hague, 12-14 December 2006

Conclusions
and agreements of the inaugural meeting of the Network of Editors of Historical
Sources, Porta Historica, The Hague, 12-14 December 2006

On the initiative of the Instituut voor
Nederlandse Geschiedenis (Institute of Netherlands History) five institutions,
each charged with facilitating historical research in Europe via source
editions, reference works and web portals, met in The Hague, 12-14 December
2006, in order to inaugurate a Network of Editors of Historical Sources, Porta
Historica.

The institutions involved are: the Institut für
Mittelalterforschung, Vienna, Austria (IMAF); the Commission Royale d’histoire/Koninklijke Commissie voor Geschiedenis, Brussels,
Belgium (CRH/KCG); the École
Nationale des Chartes, Paris, France (ECN); the Instituut voor Nederlandse
Geschiedenis, The Hague, The Netherlands (ING);
and the Institute of Historical Research, London, United Kingdom
(IHR). Of each of these institutions two staff members gathered in The Hague. Furthermore,
the four members of the working group of the ING that carried
out the preparatory work for the meeting joined in.

The meeting opened on Wednesday
morning with the institutions introducing themselves and getting to know the
other participants. Dr. Boudien de Vries, chair of the board of
the ING, moderated the session.That
morning saw five presentations by five different institutions, from five
different countries, of five different organisations, and speaking four
different mother tongues. At the end of the morning we could conclude that at
least we all have in common the aim to further and facilitate historical
research. One of the means to achieve this is by editing historical sources or
making them otherwise accessible to the scholarly community. All institutions
are working on the production of printed editions, books and journals, as well
as electronic or online versions of them. Of course we found a lot of
differences in the way our institutions function. But despite these
differences, we also discovered that there are a lot of similarities each of us
shares with at least one or two of the institutions. We became aware that great
differences can be a thread for further cooperation; too many similarities can
even be dangerous. It seemed obvious that this mixture of differences and similarities
is very challenging, and can be very fruitful for our future network. This
should give all participants the possibility to gain by the network.

Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning the participants discussed intensively the
questions of how they expect the network to function, and what projects they
want to carry out jointly. At the end of the meeting some conclusions were
reached and follow-up agreements were made.

We agreed that in this first stage the main
purpose of our network will be to exchange information. In the beginning the emphasis
will be on the methodology of making sources accessible, editing sources,
producing reference works, and furthermore on information technology. As the
network develops there will also come to be a focus on historical content.

On four points specific decisions were made:

We
will set up a basic website. The ING offered to host the website and to
coordinate the content. All institutions are prepared to deliver content.

The
network will hold annual meetings. At the end of this first meeting in The Hague each of the institutions offered to host one of
the next meetings, beginning with Vienna (2007),
and followed by London (2008), Brussels
(2009) and Paris
(2010).

The
network will start forms of collaboration by introducing a project in the shape
of editions of a micro-corpus of
historical sources. All participants agreed in the future to focus on
diplomatic sources in the broadest sense.

The
network will discuss the development of common citation standards of digital
historical sources in combination with the broader field of the development of
criteria for evaluation and authentication.

At the end of Thursday morning some additional
practical agreements were made.

Each
of the institutions will have a contact person in order to facilitate the
communication between the institutions. Eef Dijkhof will be contact person of
the ING. Furthermore, he will perform the task of secretary of the network, developing
further proposals (for instance about the organisation of the network, the
content of the website) and supporting the preparation of our discussion next
year.

The
fact sheet that each of the institutions had made in preparation for the
inaugural meeting might be very useful as an introduction of our institutes on
the website.

We agreed to submit a proposal for the 21st
International Congress of Historical Sciences in 2010 in Amsterdam, organised
by the International Committee of Historical Sciences. The congress will offer
an opportunity to make ourselves better known and discuss our themes before a
wider public of colleagues and other historians. There has been a call for
so-called specialised themes. The proposals have to be submitted
ultimately by Friday 22 December 2006. The International Committee will decide
on the programme at the end of 2007. Donald Haks (ING) will make a draft of
this proposal. The other institutions will be given the opportunity to comment
on that draft.*

At the end of the meeting we could conclude
that each of the institutions is showing a strong commitment to inaugurate the
network and, of course, to let it function.

Eef Dijkhof

The Hague, November 2007

______________________________________________

* The proposal was put forward on 21 December 2006 to
the International Committee of
Historical Sciences.